With the new school year beginning, Sias is bustling with life once again. The students have returned, and with them, new teachers are arriving. We’d like to introduce you to one of our new teachers this year, Elisa!

Elisa joins us from California with her family of four! Below, you can learn more about her first impressions of Sias and a little about her background.

Welcome, Elisa!

Where to begin! 7 months ago, I had a baby in California. In addition, this is my husband and my 7th year of marriage. Within those 7 years, we’ve been moving around and traveling to many places; I believe we’ve been to about 20 countries. Within the last 7 months we’ve gone to Singapore, Australia, India, Korea, and now we are finally in XinZheng, China! Who knows how long we will be here but for now we have signed a year long contract with Sias University.

We’ve lived in China before, so the culture shock of living in China is a lot less this time around. However, living with other families and people in the same building for the past two weeks has been different but amazing! It’s like college dorms all over again except now I have a family and I’m living around other families! It’s been such an amazing experience!

In addition to the new living situation, we have a lot more technology in our lives as well. There is a WeChat group for everything here! If you are unfamiliar with WeChat,  it is an app that Chinese people use to communicate with each other. Because there is a group created for everything from kombucha to jiujitsu, I’ve been getting messages nonstop throughout the day that it’s been hard to keep up with each group. That being said, our family has been amazed by the community that this place fosters! It’s only been two weeks, but we can see why people come here for one year to test it out and end up staying for more!